1. Practical Story Sizing Brett Maytom Senior Consultant, Readify Vic.NET – 13 Aug 2011

2. Talk Backlog  What is size  Relative Size  Sizing Scales  Velocity  Story Size versus Task Sizing  Running Sizing Meetings  Questions

3. What is size?  Unit of measure for work

4. Why Relative Sizing  Your Time IS NOT My Time

5. Size does not …  indicate time  Indicate skill  include risk  change over time  Increase\decrease with proficiency

6. Relative

7. It’s relative

8. Sizing Scales  Fibonacci 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34  Modified Fibonacci 1 2 3 5 8 13 20 50 100  Binary 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128  T-Shirt

9. Other Symbols  0 (Zero) “Too small and not worth sizing”  ? “I have no idea what you are talking about”  ∞ (Infinity) “This is way too big”

10. Velocity  Rate of work of team “Team can complete X story points per sprint”  Not individual  Full team including BA, QA, Dev., Test, Architect, Scrum Master  Improves with time

11. Story Sizing

12. Stories and Tasks

13. Task Sizing  Tasks defined in sprint planning  Sized in hours  Updated daily with remaining hours  Used for sprint burndown  Cross-check against Story Size using current velocity

14. Sizing in multi-team  Consistent story size critical  Large scope differences  Clear benchmarks  Central team

15. How to play Planning Poker  Product owner presents a story  Team clarify by asking questions  “1 … 2 … 3 … show”  Smallest and largest values explain  Repeat until consensus reached

16. Spikes  Totally new technology  Never done before  Have no idea how to size work  Time-boxed to a few days

17. Acid Test A story sized in the first sprint should have the same size in later sprints

18. Practical Tips  Use relative sizes for stories  Do not factor in effort, risk and time  Build a list of benchmark stories  Continually inspect that “time” is not introduced story  Differentiate between Task and Story sizes  Your Time IS NOT My Time

20. Thank you Brett Maytom brett.maytom@readify.net @brettmaytom http://brett.maytom.net